A place to ramble and maybe make some sense about a thing or two.

Archive for the tag “star wars episode iv”

Last night was hysterical! Youngest Son had two friends over for his first “group” sleepover. One of his friends wasn’t able to attend but the other two were more than happy to make up for the missing energy in the room.

Oddly, they wanted to start the evening by watching the DVD we have of this year’s school musical. Youngest Son and his friend Leonard were both in the show. Leonard was the lead actor and had not seen the DVD yet (the show was produced in November 2011). Youngest Son, Leonard, and Sheldon were having a blast watching the show, telling backstage stories, and re-winding the action to see the goof-ups and other silly things going on during the performance. Sadly, the student they “hired” to make the DVD only filmed one night out of the three productions and had a field day with the zoom button. Let’s just say that if you get motion-sick easily, you do not want to watch the DVD.

After that we ordered pizza. I made sure each of the guys brought their own bottle of soda or other suitable beverage because I didn’t want to go out and buy a lot and have a bunch of caffeine-laden sodas (which I don’t drink at all) lying around the house. Three large deep-dish pizzas lasted a lot longer than I thought they would. Teenage boys are notorious for scarfing-down anything that’s covered in pepperoni and cheese but there was still some left this morning. After the pizza-snarf began, they decided that they wanted to watch a real movie. Leonard had never seen Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope which just completely baffled me since all of the guys are pretty well-versed in nerdy/geeky genre information.

Quick note here — you may recognize the names of Youngest Son’s friends from a television show. They call themselves “The Big Bang Club” at school and each kid has a character and they even call themselves by those names. They even added a female friend of theirs (as Penny) so they’d have the whole core cast.

Back to the story. Since I’m also a huge Star Wars geek (seen the original trilogy movies over 1000+ times each), I asked if they wanted to see the awful 1990’s “remakes” with “added special effects,” the original theatrical version (my favorite), or the latest Blu-Ray release for the 30th Anniversary. I was impressed that they picked the theatrical release. So, I popped-in the DVD for them and waited for them to be amazed with the movie.

That didn’t take long. Not the being amazed part. The being interested part. I forgot that teenage boys also have a short attention span and when it came to watching the entire movie, that wasn’t going to happen. Youngest Son and Sheldon wanted to prank-call Penny because Leonard is upset he broke-up with her and they wanted to leave a message on her voicemail about it. (No, I’m not kidding. “Leonard” and “Penny” really were “dating” and have broken-up now.) Then they each wanted to play with their Nintendo DS units. Then they saw Youngest Son’s Chess 4 set and wanted to play that. All of this while the movie is still playing in the background. Husband agreed to be the fourth so they could play Chess 4 — a game designed, you guessed it, so four people could play chess against each other at the same time. Sheldon said he knew he was going to be slaughtered because he and Youngest Son play chess at school all the time and Youngest Son beats him easily. And he did again on this version — he wiped-out the other three players in almost no time.

After that they talked and laughed and watched the last minutes of the movie before the credits started to roll. Once the movie was officially over, they decided to play games on our PlayStation 3. We have some that are for up-to four players, so they each grabbed a controller and started playing. After they tired of one they’d put in another. Soon they wanted to play Lego Star Wars and took turns trying to play in co-op mode when only Youngest Son knew how the game worked.

Finally, around 11:30 p.m., I told them they needed to get off the PS3 and get their sleeping bags out. They didn’t necessarily have to go to sleep, but I was going to bed and wanted to be sure that they got some rest since Leonard’s parents would be by early to pick him up for church. Husband had already fallen asleep, so I went to bed to read while listening to make sure the guys were okay. A pillow fight broke out between them. Actually, to hear them tell it, it was a “pillows versus ‘bag of wet cement’ fight” since Leonard’s pillow was a lot firmer than the other two’s. Soon they teamed-up and it became a pillow ambush. They finally decided to watch Star Wars: Episode VI, Return of the Jedi because Leonard had never seen that one either and wanted to know why everyone thinks the “It’s a trap!” jokes are funny. He stayed awake long enough to hear “It’s a trap!” in the movie and then drifted-off. Sheldon fell asleep and then woke up and went back to sleep after the movie was over. Youngest Son stayed-up for the whole thing and turned off the TV and DVD player when it was over. I had already passed-out in bed after the beginning scenes had played.

I got up at 5 a.m. like I do every morning to take my medication and let the dogs out for “walkies.” I could tell the boys had tired themselves out because there wasn’t a peep coming from the living room floor. Either that or Cat had slept on their faces and killed them, but I was pretty sure that hadn’t happened. Usually there’s a little snoring out of Youngest Son, but he was too tired to do so. After going back to bed and getting up a couple of hours later, Leonard was awake and playing on his DS; Youngest Son was just starting to awaken; and Sheldon was still crashed-out on the floor. I ordered them up and to get ready so that we could go out for breakfast at the worldwide-franchised evil clown fast food restaurant just a couple of blocks away. While the kids ate, Husband, Celeste and I sat and had some breakfast as well while waiting to return the boys to their parents (who were to meet us there). Husband said his coffee was McCrappy and realized why he never goes there for breakfast anymore. Ever. Once the parents had retrieved their offspring, we returned home.

Fortunately the guys didn’t mess-up the house and things were easily put back in order. We thought about taking Celeste to the self-service dog wash a few towns over but they’re closed on Sundays. So, I went and took a nap.

I remember the days of sleepovers at my house and going to parties at friends’ houses. Everyone believed they could stay up all night and not have to sleep and sometimes punished those who did by dunking their bra in water and putting it in the freezer. At least the guys didn’t do silly things like that at our house — although one admitted they wanted to try the “hand in the bowl of warm water” trick. The only reason they didn’t was because Mythbusters had already proven it didn’t work. Lucky for them. If they’d tried it or if it had worked on my hardwood floors, there would be three “geeks” learning to sand, stain, and seal 79-year-old wood with their toothbrushes. And I don’t believe there’s an app for that.